Hello Reader,
As I ask myself the questions — wasn't it June just a month ago? — I'm sure you too are noticing the race towards the end of the year slowly begin. Like sprinters slowly approaching the starting line, shaking out their muscular frame and waving to the crowd in a symbolic gesture that says just one thing:
I've got this, with a nervous smile.
I don't want to be too abstract here, but I often think about the way it feels when you watch someone walk into a room and try to work out whether parts of themselves need to be tucked away to make it through the next hour.
I don't know about you Reader, but I feel that sometimes that someone is us.
That nervous smile at the starting block says so much more than the muscular frame.
Maybe it’s because of the rooms I’ve been in these past few years. Maybe the conversations that encircle me are different in these places? Maybe my filter is becoming more acute? Yet the tone seems to be the same: we're all just trying to work out if we can be fully present in the spaces we create. A little bit more conscious of wether these places are safe for us.
And if this is true, then should we not be more conscious when creating?
I think about this often; as a researcher, a strategist, a designer, creator, and as a leader. And above all, as a father. How people engage and feel is often on my mind, as are those moments when you can sense that a person realises they don’t belong.
This hits home for me more than anything — this sense of not-Belonging.
I’ve seen it in young people who carry stories they’ve never been invited to share. In communities who’ve learnt to scan the room for cues about safety every time they step into the space. In First Nations leaders who read every space within seconds because they’ve had to. My trans friends who measure whether their truth will be held, or debated. In neurodivergent thinkers who’ve spent years managing the friction between their brilliance and the narrowness of the world around them.
I can keep going.
This lack of Belonging is not theoretical nor is it abstract. It is designed.
Belonging is architectural and structural.
Belonging sits at the heart of creativity and at the hands of the designer and every leader. Belonging is strategic. We wrote about this in our recent report on community and cultural storytelling.
Belonging is shaped by the smallest decisions we make every day; every priority and every agenda item that calls for our focus.
And when it is missing, people will rarely offer their wisdom. They will though offer what they hope will be acceptable; a version of themselves shaped to avoid harm in a space where they are used, instead of truly seen.
And the people who feel this most acutely are almost always those whose identities, histories, and ways of being have been ignored, misunderstood, under-represented, or pushed down by the systems that surround us.
Reader, that’s why Belonging must shift to become one of our most important responsibilities. A responsibility that asks of us to search for the areas where we might do our work, and to seek out for ourselves, the opportunity to lead.
Not to wait for permission.
To show up and be the leader who chose to design different spaces, better ways of working and more inclusive places where everyone feels that they belong.
This is the work.
Because when Belonging is present in our decisions, our work, in our homes, our friendships and the places and spaces we create, our lives expand and we might just exhale in the knowing that the world is moving with us.
Alongside us.
See you next week,